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Bailey

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Bailey Surname Genealogy

The bailey or bailiff, from the
Old French bailli, was a free man of importance for the lord of
the
manor. He was the supervisor of the peasants who worked on the
land. The term was also later used as a public administator of a
district. The word baillie is still the common form for a
chief
magistrate or sheriff in Scotland.

The Middle English baille, meaning
"the outer wall of a castle" and giving us the Old Bailey in London,
provides
a possible alternative derivation, one who lived by this outer
wall.
And Bailey was and is also a place name in the Ribble valley in
Lancashire.

a Bayley family was
first recorded at Bradford Leigh in 1523.They
were to remain there as local gentry until the 1750’s.

the Bayley
name also cropped up in the early/mid 1500’s at Trowbridge and later at
Bromham
and at Wingfield (where they were clothiers).

and John Bayley was a prosperous
Salisbury merchant who became its mayor in 1577.

Other Tudor sightings of the
Bayley name were in Shropshire (where William Bayllie was the sheriff
of
Shrewsbury in 1527), in Gloucestershire (at Wheatenhurst), and in Essex
(at Woodford).

Bailey
later became the preferred spelling and, by the 19th century, had
spread widely
across the whole country, with sizeable numbers in Yorkshire and
Lancashire. An
early Yorkshire Bailey was Christopher Bayley, a weaver, who was born
in
Almondbury in 1530.

John Bayley
founded what was to become Wrekin College in Wellington, Shropshire in
1880. Telford in Shropshire was in fact the top area to find a
Bailey in 1881; while in
1998 it
was Stoke in nearby Staffordshire.
Scotland. The Scottish spelling has generally been and remained
Baillie, rather
than Bailey.

Baillies
of Lamington in Lanarkshire have said that they have a descent from
Scottish
king John Balliol, but no linkage has been shown.The
first Baillie of this line, Sir William
Baillie of Hoprig, was recorded in 1346 and he was granted the
Lamington estate
ten years later.These Baillies were
later staunch supporters of Mary, Queen of Scots.

There were Baillie offshoots
at Jerviswood and Mellerstain in Lanarkshire, at Monkton
in Ayrshire, and also at Dochfour in the Highlands.George Baillie from the Dochfour branch set
off for the Caribbean in the 1780’s and became a slave merchant.However, his business there collapsed in
1805.

A Baillie family acquired Polkemmet in West Lothian in 1620 and the
house
stayed with the family until the 1950's.

Ireland.William Baillie
of Ayrshire was granted lands
in county Cavan in Ireland in 1610 as a result of the Ulster
plantations.
He gave his name to the town of Baillieborough. Meanwhile
Alexander Baillie came
to county Down in 1636 where he secured lands at Ringdufferin.His descendants were resident at Ringdufferin
House for the next two hundred years.

The Baily name also appeared in Ireland.The progenitor was the Rev. Lewis Baily, born either in Scotland
or in Wales.His son Nicholas became an
Irish landowner
and MP for Newry.Later Bailys
established themselves in Wexford.

America. There were early Baileys in Massachusetts.

New England.
Thomas Bayley from
Wiltshire was an early settler in Weymouth, Massachusetts, arriving
there in
the 1630's. A descendant Timothy Bailey purchased an
island
off
Maine in 1750 which is now known as Bailey's Island.

Nearby at Pemaquid Point was where
John Bayley had stepped ashore in 1635 with his two children the day
before his
ship, the Angel Gabriel, sank during a severe storm.This John Bayley, a weaver and also from
Wiltshire, made his home at Salisbury.The
land that he owned, originally called Bayley’s Neck, is now known as
Point
Shore.Descendants migrated to
Connecticut and to Maine.

Richard and James Bailey were two brothers, probably
from Yorkshire, who came to New England separately, but both settling
in
Rowley, Massachusetts:

Richard arrived
in 1638.His son Joseph, a deacon, settled
in Bradford in Essex county.Later
Baileys of this line had moved to New Hampshire by the Revolutionary
War.One account has them as shoemakers
there,
another as silversmiths.

James came in
1640.Jacob Bailey, born in Rowley in
1731,
departed with his family for Nova Scotia in 1779.There
he became the Anglican clergyman at
Annapolis Royal and embarked on a writing career that was to make him
one of
the early literary figures of Canada.

Elsewhere. Among
the early
Baileys in Virginia
were four William Baileys recorded and one Nicholas Bailey. All
four of these Baileys were in the colony by 1620, although one of the
William Baileys was killed by Indians in 1622.

An
arrival from
Wiltshire (from Bromham parish) was Joel Baily, a Quaker
who
crossed the Atlantic in 1682 on the Welcome with
William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania.Joel also met his future wife Ann Short on the ship and they
later
settled in Chester county, Pennsylvania.

South Africa.
Thomas and Ann Bailey emigrated from Yorkshire
to the Cape colony in the 1860’s.Thomas
became a successful businessman in Queenstown.His son Abe grew rich
from his various mining interests and was made a baronet in 1918.

Sir Abe Bailey's second
wife Mary was a pioneer female aviator in the 1920’s.His son John by his first wife married
Winston Churchill’s daughter Diana, but they were late divorced.His son Derrick by his second wife was a
decorated World War Two pilot and later a county cricketer with Essex.

Australia. William Bailey from Staffordshire
was transported to Australia on the Matilda
in 1791.On his release he bought land
at St. Albans in NSW to farm.His son
Henry was known as the squire of Cedar Farm.The original two-story cottage homestead there still stands.

John Bailey, a botanist in London, arrived in
South Australia on the Buckinghamshire
in 1838 and was the forebear of
a
remarkable family of Bailey botanists in Australia.John had been appointed the Curator of the
colony’s botanical gardens.His son
Frederick became the chief botanist of Queensland in 1881 and was a
prolific
writer about Queensland’s flora.Frederick's
son
John returned to South Australia as Director of the Adelaide botanical
gardens
in 1917.

Select
Bailey Miscellany

If you would like to read more, click on the miscellany page for
further stories and accounts:

Nathan Bailey was the
foremost English lexicographer before Samuel Johnson.Sir Joseph Bailey was a pioneer
of the iron industry in South Wales in the early 19th century.Sir Abe Bailey was a South
African
diamond tycoon, financier and politician. Sir Donald Bailey was the
English civil engineer who invented the Bailey bridge.Beetle Bailey, begun in 1950 by
Mort Walker, is the oldest comic strip in America still being produced.David Bailey was the
celebrated English photographer of the 1960's.F
Lee Bailey is a legendary
defense attorney of many high profile trials in America. Select Baileys Today